desertdude

Yeah so sad about Idriss though, truly an amazing offroader and super sweet nice guy. Went on some really awesome trips with him, most memorable one being the overnighter in Wahab with idriss and Yahya. Also miss all the cool nights hanging out with the gang at the riding club after Aweer . Ah the good ol.days

Try something closer to home first, The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which many see as a stepping stone to the Dakar If you remember Albert's brother Ramesh did enter that even though his patrol burnt to a crisp. From what I recall it was 2 to 300k including the car. You can can get in touch with him and inquire. Oh and I just remembered so did Idriss in the red Pajero

Wish I could play by ear and sing. So I don't have to beg vocalists to be on my tracks and hunt down royalty free samples! Other than Ive been blessed, anything I really wanted to learn Ive been able to do it. Wanted to drive like a pro in thr desert, did that, taught my self how to play thr drums, learned how to compose, use a DAW professionally, learnt how to DJ, learnt how to mix and master professionally on headphones none the less. Good enough to get paid for all of the above Learnt video editing and sfx too in Adobe premier pro, so at level to get paid for it. And now learning well almost done how to fly commercial jet liners. Well virtually anyways using the same platforms used to teach real pilots. Can virtually fly a Boeing 777 and 737. Also Airbus 312 but not a fan of that. Oh when I mean learnt, I mean self taught. Unfortunately too expensive and long to get a real commercial pilots license otherwise that would have been my next career move. Till date thats about it, but periodically I keep getting interested in new stuff so lets see what comes along next.

I basically drive a BMW. Technically its a Range Rover but other than a Land Rover body and few bits and bobs it's a BMW with a range rover body. It's got the BMW M62 engine, ZF5HP trans used in many older BMWs like the older 7 and 5 series. Even the ecus are Bmw, you can use a BMW diagnostic scanner on it and works on it. Even the infotainment is a direct swap from Bmw of that generation. I've saved quite some money by buying BMW parts than the more expensive Land Rover bits. But I'll say this when its working it's a damn good car but it has massive engineering flaws and is a lemon. Timing chain guide rails are plastic which in this weather become hard and crack leaving the timing chain slapping around scrapping the metal and the broken plastic rails fall in the sump and block the oil pickup which starve the engine of oil and then your engine becomes toast. Gaskets and seals are made of putty which disintegrate and it's leaks from everywhere. The Vanos systems goes to shit around 100-150k mine is only one I've seen with a working vanos I've checked many other 2002-2005 Range rovers none of theirs were working. Some stupid german decided not to give the front drive shaft a cv joint which then strips the teeth and you lose front diff and voila out of thr blue one day you don't have drive( there was a massive worldwide recall on this) Another smart german at ZF decided that the transmission doesnt need to be serviced ans put HUGE warning stickers on it, do not service, gearbox filled for life, but failed to mentioned not life of car but life of transmission which is supposed to be 100k so after that tge torque converter clutch packs wear out and you start to get shuddering like when driving over cattle grid then soon after that other things inside the boxs start to break. The engine is super sensitive, and requires fully sythentic oil because it runs so hot. The thermostat on it opens at temps where other cars start to overheat and melt. And god forbid for whatever reason if you overheat the car just a tiny bit also say goodbye to your cylinder heads if your are lucky. You also end up with scoured sleeves which basically means dismantling the entire motor. And having need sleeves ans piston heads put in. All in all I will never touch anything made by BMW with a 1000ft long pole. German engineering my ass!

Like today all off a sudden was hit by a torrential level downpour just before maleha on the way back from Fuj and right on cue one guy starts flashing his hazards!

I don't think anyone watches Top Gear for their informative and unbiased car reviews. TG stop being that when the series was given a overhaul in the early 2000's

Finally me and you have something in common. The F40. I also think its the snazziest looking exotic. Once me and two buddies were just coming home fromThe Premiere in Hyatt Regency Diera, it was the most happening place back then! (showing my age here) It was past 3am and we were in my buddies clapped out 92 corolla company card it was so far gone that even half of steering rubber had gone and now it was half rubber and half steel ring. And we saw Mohd Bin Sulayem ( old timers in Dubai will know who he is ) in his red F40 cruising down coming towards us in thr opposite lane. So just for shits and giggles my buddy shouted out tye window Sulayem number 1 !!!! And to our surprise he pulled over. So we took then next u turn and went up to him and parked. He got out of the car smiled, shook hands with all of us. After some small talk he showed us around his F50 and not 40 as we had initially thought. The top was open so he showed us the inside aswell as the outside. I couldn't get over the two radiators and its massive fans tucked in the two scoops in the hood. Not a F40 but cool none the less and a great chance meeting with a legend, he didn't have to stop and entertain a bunch of kids at 3am but he did and was very pleasant to talk to and humble. So an unforgettable encounter none the less. Tell you about how I spent a day with Jacky Icks and and how I was entrusted with the keys to his actual Paris to Dakar winning Porsche rally car( then owned by a private collector ) for a week some other time.

Well I think I spoke too soon, blame it mostly on getting old. My start in thr field of safaris and offloading is like that. Around 20yrs back it was a pretty close knit group freelance drivers which every tour company used after they used up their own crew which was not more than 5-10 for moat Co's and almost impossible for a total noob who has never driven with a license just a couple of years old to get into the game. Even though I had good contacts none of them came true.save one who was able to hook me up doing the dirty work for the company for free that is drive the company pickup to run camp setup and at that time they were alao expanding and building two more camps. And none of the old hot shot freelancers wanted that work because first of all they didnt get to use their own cars so less pay, then work was tough first one in and last one out. No riding cushy land cruiser picking up possibly some nice babes and/or get good tips, work was hard and most got a back ache driving the pickup on washboard tracks, dunes and loading and offloading the pickup plus a lotta responsibility as the whole operation depended on the camp pickup and its driver So I said yes and quickly became their goto guy as the camp pickup driver because even the companydrivers didnt want this job. Then I ended up rolling over the pickup. Was rallying down a sand track at around 110-120. It was like a proper rally stage with lots of tight turns because it was bulldozed through a patch of technical dunes and was about 5kms long. I took a bend the pickup was unloaded so started to drift off the track. I over corrected and hit a 3-4 foot dune on the other bank, which send the pick up flying, did a 180 midair and landed on thr roof. The afore mentioned roof mounted tyre and carrier acted like a pseudo roll cage but it was bad enough that I was knocked unconscious and later had to transported via ambulance to Dubai Hospital. I thought I would never work for them again but guess it was such a dirty job not long after I was called back again or maybe I was so good at it and no one else wanted it, Atleast that's what I like to think anyways

Must be a real nice place, hiring noobs and then not even firing them for such blunders! The closet I can relate tp such is when I knocked out the parking sign hanging at the entrance of the covered parking of Shj City Center with company lifted land cruiser pickup with a roof mounted sparetyre.

That looks like a sheep axel.

Salvage cars already come here and these would actually be worth buying and repairing as they are practical new cars with all the important bits still untouched. Still better than the Qatari dealership for Toyota which was selling used repaired as new 0 meter cars. Thankfully they were shutdown for this

Totally not missing the point here. The guy shows a particular way the mirror should be adjusted i.e sticking your face on the driver side mirror and then moving it outwards to a certain point. My point is that doesn't work for our GCC/ROW mirrors and just creates a blind spot. Maybe you are not getting it because you might have never experience US spec flat mirrors and how much reduced rear field of view they give. And if you set them up like our regular GCC mirrors i.e with a tiny bit of out car showing then you can hardly see anything behind I was assuming ( could be wrong here ) it was pretty obvious to everyone the way to adjust "our" mirrors is to move them out with your head in its natural driving position where you can just see a tiny sliver of your car, Also not facing skywards with the road barely visible at the bottom. P.S : From your pics IMO from the pics your mirrors are still too inwards. I move them outwards when only a thin sliver/strip of your car is visible on the inner edge of the mirror. You have way too much car showing. P.P.S : After I got my stupid flat rear view mirrored L322 I learned Land Rover ditched this stupidity in 2005 and went back to regular convex mirrors on both sides. But at 400 dhs a pop I was willing to take my chances.

Brand new Range Rovers and a Jaguar worth hundreds of thousands of pounds had their roofs torn off after a lorry driver smashed into a rail bridge. The blunder occurred at 8.30am when the lorry towing the brand new luxury 4x4s, some still in their plastic wrapping, ploughed into a railway bridge in Perthshire https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6311333/amp/Brand-new-Range-Rovers-Jaguar-4x4-roofs-torn-lorry-crashes-bridge.html?fbclid=IwAR0vlvs6b58VlXV3MTPTHpCL4DFbnqFQ08C5Ih2Gk1bCR17FBgg5mp9-HU4

Well put barr. Also remember majority of the population is from south east Asia, where there isn't much or virtually non existant car culture the reasons for which I will not get into. So that transfers to here aswell. Many even domt have a car back home. P.S: Never say never, like most long time expats my dad came here in the mid 70s thinking the same exact thing and believe it or not 40plus years later still thinks the same. But it was easier to make a rags to riches stories back then with just a handful of dirhams. Unfortunately we went from rags to riches and back to rags!!!

Two reasons. One its really difficult to arrange proper car meetups here, because everything has to be official here permits and permission taken, fees paid etc etc otherwise you get shutdown and or fined Yanni lots of red tape which in return makes its not worth it. Other than informal car group meetups in some parking lot. Secondly this place is Car heaven so one really doesnt need such events to see "exotics" just drive around Dubai and you'll see all sorts regularly. So its really not a big deal Additional reason, modifications is such a hassle here, so many ordinary joes domt bother or the ones who do get a surprise at annual reg that their expensive mod is illegal and needs to come off. And finally I wish people would stop comparing how things back home are. Y'all been here long enough. Get over it! Lets face it, If we could afford the cars and lifestyles we have here "back home" then none of us would be here now, would we.

You do know most cars have a tab on the center mirror if pulled it flips up at an angle. Then you can still see at night but minus the glare P.S : I tried the video method on my driver side which has the flat mirror and it was totally shit. creating two new blind spots. while removing one Uh the Americans and their weird ways!

Couldn't find anyone else to host a car show other than a cricketer? This can't be good, got shyte written all over it.

Who the hell is flintoff? And Yeah TG is going the way of Fifth Gear but can't be worse than Top Gear America! Not to be confused with Top Gear USA which I actually liked, dunno why History killed that off. And news on the new season of The Grand Tour, seems like ages between seasons. Not enough to make 6-7 episodes a year me thinks

Personally not a big fan of the SLK, hair dresser/girly car Perfect for the wife though. Also be careful of the roof, they tend to go wrong often and its a huge $$$$ bill to sort them out. I knew a guy who had a CL500 he got new, he was so spooked bout the roof that he never opened it once for the whole time he had it. Later his ABC suspension started to give him issues. And the dealer refused to fix it under warranty making up some excuse, case went to Germany and even they refused. was qouted close to 30k to fix it. After a lot of fighting the case went to Dxb police who later said either replace the car or fix it FOC. So yeah even new cars have issues and big ones at that. And finally after scaring you congrats in thr new ride. Great color though. White is awesome for this country, Doesnt get too hot i.e less fuel consumption and doesnt require to be washed as often either.

Sorry for the late reply, but my point here is that this is for a US spec flat mirror, just like the mirror in your bathroom, rest of the world including here use convex which give a bigger field of vision, from the edge of your car to your peripheral, virtually eliminating blind spots. I actually have tested this many times on long boring drives in my old p38 which had pretty small mirrors for it sides. Watch a car come up behind me in the center mirror in the overtaking lane then overtake me and I never lost sight of it it. Adjusting convex mirrors to flat mirror standards is asking for trouble.

I think a good analogy would be restaurants. Any restaurants that offer a ton of dishes on the menu usually at best do an OK job at all of them. But there are speciality restaurants that offer only a certain type of dishes, it also not uncommon to see a place offering only one dish, that's right just one dish but they do that one dish perfectly. Same with medicine you go to certain specialists for certain aliments. A general practitioner can only diagnose and treat common problems for anything else you are referred to a specialist. There is a reason why the saying A jack of all trades master of none.came about. Not all cars are built the same or use the same parts or tech. Ok an internal combustion engine works on a certain principle, transmissions, brakes etc etc also a capable mech can handle basics, but not every detail of everycar. .

Been there done that. Although there was a time I wish the loaded LWB dually Chevy pickup I had to drive to Alalin had those side mirror extensions, as changing lanes at highway speeds on a busy highway is not something I would want to try very often again.

I know its frowned upon just like asking a woman her age. But honestly if it someone well I know or am friends with. I have no issues with this, excluding random strangers ofcourse.

Well that's just my own personal quirk which wont go away no matter how I set them. I guess can also be attributed early on to having switch multiple cars during the course of day. Also this reminds me my Sheep Xj also had the same issue, driver side flat mirror and pax side regular good ol' convex. That was my first time and it annoyed me to no extent, so much so I bought a convex mirror and about the same size and stuck it on the other one. This WHOLE DEBATE ABOUT BLIND SPOTS is virtually eliminated with the use of two convex mirrors, which was implemented by everyone because of that, which the yanks refuse to follow because of NHTSA "safety" reasons because it "changes the size of the car and thus making it hard to judge how far it is" Hence they have those objects in the rear view mirror may appear smaller than they seem warnings on the one passenger side mirror. My whole argument here is, people who have regular both convex mirrors should not follow this as this might actually create a blind spot closer in where there was none before ( Cant check confirm because my own stupid car has a flat mirror ) And as usual to dump some hate on flat rear view mirror setup. Oh and all new cars in the US now have to have a rear camera by law. Chalk that one up to another weird NHTSA regulation. https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/in-defense-of-convex-drivers-side-mirrors/

This is mostly for US spec cars which ave flat rear view mirrors rather than convex wing mirrors. Although some GCC cars have a weird setup like my L322 range rover where the drive side wing mirror is flat and passenger side in convex. Which makes for an awkward situation to say the least, but now am used to it. And dunno ever since I started driving I have a weird habit of leaning as forward as I can when doing big lane changes or when I need to see blind apots as I can when looking into the mirror, a friend used to do it I guess I picked it up from him but this weird quirk of mine negates the habit of messing with the mirrors too much